Derby Thoughts - Animal Kingdom going forward; Mo

[GPK]

Originally Posted by Travis Stone

Bobby Flay loved him today.

Andy and Eric said on Talking Horses today that this is the type of year where the Triple Crown might be easier versus a year with a more top-heavy/competitive group and I agree.

I'm not saying Animal Kingdom can or will win the Triple Crown, but it's hard to argue with his effort today. Slow pace and all, he won fair and square. What happens if he gets pace? Plus, happy for Graham Motion, who is definitely one of the good guys in racing.

Nehro ran big, he'll be useful down the road too.

And what if - big what if - Uncle Mo were at his best today? Slow pace, tracking it, if not setting it... it's hard to imagine he doesn't open-up in the stretch, and then it's a matter of whether or not gets there first.

For a Derby trail that was frustrating and disappointing, it turned out okay today... but I do hope in the years to come we can return to triple digit preps and performances throughout the early spring.

With the scratch of Uncle Mo, we were left with 1 horse in the field that had run a triple digit beyer (Soldat) and 3 horses that had never run a beyer in the 90's. Happy to see JV get his first Derby win and even happier to see a guy like Motion get his Derby win as well, but it was a race filled with some pretty unimpressive horses.

As an aside, the scratch of Little Mike in the Woodford proved huge for the Get Stormy connections. Was glad to see Ramon win that race.

[JJP]

I'm not sure the pace was that slow. The track has been deep lately and we've seen a lot of slow fractions in the route races. According to the chart, there still was a number of horses at least a dozen lengths out; Dialed In was over 17 lengths off the pace. If the pace really was that slow, they all would've been within 7-8 lengths of the leader.

[Rudeboyelvis]

Originally Posted by GPK

With the scratch of Uncle Mo, we were left with 1 horse in the field that had run a triple digit beyer (Soldat) and 3 horses that had never run a beyer in the 90's. Happy to see JV get his first Derby win and even happier to see a guy like Motion get his Derby win as well, but it was a race filled with some pretty unimpressive horses.

As an aside, the scratch of Little Mike in the Woodford proved huge for the Get Stormy connections. Was glad to see Ramon win that race.

Killled me in the Oaks/Woodford/Derby P3... hope you had GS in the double, Kev.... Singled GS in the DD after the scratch